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Step by Step/Issue 35
This is Issue #35 of ''Step by Step''. This is the fifth issue of Volume Six. Under Skin Nobody goes on knowing the time. It was the hour of the nightmare, and Randy did not know. He saw it was the afternoon. The hour of the nightmare is different, it is when the horrors that lurk during bedtime come out with breath from the day's sunshine. He didn't acknowledge it when he squatted down a hole that paved way into the sewer and scrambled after the people. Yet in the hour of the nightmare, the troubles and worries snub out fact. Had Randy'd been well known to this, things would have turned out different. That's why Randy's clock started to tick right then. Under the street, he crossed below a drunk outta-all-senses green lantern. The place was dark; he stares at a cesspit of black that he's fallen into. The smell of smoke hung in the air. Randy noticed this, yet shrugged it off. There was something in his mind. He had murder on his mind. He was set with the pistol, locks of hair dangling down his forehead, and that one everlasting grin. He was watching the season's hunt. One of them said, "They raced through here." "Course they did," Malcolm said, and a great light christened the whole passageway. He held a tool-belt flashlight. "The four of them ran through here. The four murderers ran through here. Look at the footprints in the mud. We're on their tail." There were five of them—Malcolm alongside Amanda, who'd spoken first, and Carter, Hector, and an unknown. As usual, Carter and Hector were being mean-eyed grunts. This unknown man, youth in his face, was the soldier Nolan had seen before being ass-bitten by a bullet. His name is Patrick Hughes, says so on the nametag that rests above his left breast. As a matter of fact, it was the same place his hand would touch during his every-morning salute to the American flag. Here it was the same. The same alien landscape; Baghdad had it too. Malcolm is one to know. "I'd like to see them up-front before dark," he said. And to Carter Jameson: "Alive." The sweat-browed man nodded. There is mild irritation on him. Malcolm saw the boiling heat in him, a good man to the senses he was. Amanda did too, a good woman to the senses she was. "There's four of them," he said. His upper lip curled up. "Four of them disgusting things." "Sounds good," Hector said with a great sneer. The grip his fingers had on the shotgun toughened. "I want first pickings. I'd like to stomp the shit outta the tall one." "What'll we do with them?" Amanda is looking at Malcolm and Patrick. In that moment she figured how desperate the chase was. The others had been left at the cars; a cap-wearing Amelia at the police car and Joseph at the shitbox's wheel. Gordon hadn't been up to the challenge. "I hope to get them arrested," Malcolm responded. His gaunt, cheek-skinny face turned to Patrick. "You ought to write that one down, son." Patrick Hughes didn't startle. He had a fixed gaze on the two foul-mouthers with them. This young soldier was a familiar sight to Malcolm, like waking up in the middle of the night to see his room painted in black was to him. Patrick Hughes reminded him of one buck-toothed soldier from Tennessee. A cocky, city-loving soldier from New York. Another fine man who loved playing poker in his Nevada town. Malcolm had sent their families death letters, compensation sent in full. A part of him wished Patrick Hughes from the glorious red Indiana wouldn't go to be among them. "Really?" Sergeant Malcolm smiled. "Well, you won't have to worry about these missing men too much—we could always come back. Go back to your Smith's town and suit up. We can alert others from your radio, say you got one." "Yessir." "All right, son?" Malcolm asked. The boy has a hickory baton that hung down from his belt. He hitched the belt up, something he probably learned in boot camp. Maybe Sunday school or from good spankings, Malcolm thought. "I hear you, mister. And if the odds are good, you ought a write something down too." He leaned in. "The both of you." "Like wh—" "After this," he began. " I can make no guarantees. What you got down is a down payment, you hear me. When we get you to the town, not everybody's gonna like us. We haven't heard word from those blank-sucking generals. We've got no base to work with." Amanda goes, "No?" A light shifted in Patrick's eyes. This meant something to him. "I'm the last of my breed. I have no clear clue where my friends went. Where my comrades went. The head honcho of the town goes to me a couple days ago, speaking of a militia. Can you believe that?" Something rumbles below them. The rumbling sounded close. Sounded like a stomach growling. Malcolm doesn't take note of that. He looked further at the young soldier. "What? What?" "Believe it or not," Patrick said. "It's all strange. Whatever's going on isn't normal. Ain't no idea where all these diseased folk came from. I'm even afraid to say we're alone." "Alone," Amanda repeated. "What does alone mean?" "I'm only a Private," said Patrick. "That's all I am or ever was." "We were a stronger bunch." "What happened?" "Overrun. It was an epic disaster." Patrick raised an eyebrow. "Ain't we already in a big disaster?" "Do you know how widespread it is?" Amanda stammered. "How far the chaos has spread?" "You folks ought to know that," said Patrick. "Ain't you folk have radios where you came from?" Amanda gave him a look. Patrick gulped. "I'm more focused on the local scale. Trying to survive." "Is that why you were out here?" Amanda giggled. "Trying to survive by walking straight into the big city crawling with these, well, these'' things''." Patrick relaxed and chuckled a bit. Just a bit. "Our's was stationed at the high school." "Our's at the town. A couple week's time before today was when we landed." "What did you say?" Malcolm asked him. "What did you say about the rest of your squadron? "They're all gone," Patrick said matter-of-factly. "They're all dead." "How so?" "They're dead, all right?" "Your commander and all the rest of them?" "All of them were killed. I saw their bodies in the morgue, all of them were covered in blood." "How could they all've died?" "No more questions." "And you were the only one left, somehow?" "No more questions." Carter laughed wildly. The hour of the nightmares neared closer. It reared its head. Carter and Hector roared with laughter. They were two loose devils stopping for a break from running through the hell of the labyrinth. Carter is holding the pit of his stomach, hollering and crying. The fair-bearded officer to his left cried in laughter, too. Hector had begun to grow a slight shadow of a beard. Carter then said, "Guess who we're after?" Hector made a barbarian smile that said he knew. "Who, Carter?" "The niggers and the nigger-lovers." The two exploded in laughter. Carter tried to stop, but his efforts were like a broken record. "What are we going to do with Nolan?" "String him up good," Hector replied, and he took pleasure in seeing Malcolm listen. "The junkie?" "Oh, you know." Carter Jameson fumbled with his gun. A grin spread across his face like the wingspan of a vulture. "Pow, one to the head!" "The two others?" "The niggers?" Carter's grin went ear-to-ear. He turned to Malcolm, not losing his donkey posture. "Isn't that what Gordon said? A good old traditional lynch." "I really want to stomp that tall one. Squash him like a bug." Carter put a hand, the good one, on his comrade's shoulder. "All in good time, chum. I get it. I want the Nolan character shot beyond recognition." He muttered, "Will you help? Hector—thanks to Malcolm, Amanda, and the Hughes-man turning their backs—responded with a bobbing-for-apples nod. "The four of them all hanging together. Across two cypress trees like we'd be hanging clothes." "Dirty laundry," the big fish said. "We'll have lots." ---- "We was the notorious." Lyle Jackson is continuing down the tunnel, the flame in his hand giving off a weird backdrop composed chunks of black. The notorious what? It could have been anything, anything would have rolled with that. "We was the notorious thugs," he goes. The cigarette gives him an accent. "We're the notorious thugs and we run it good. We're the good, the bad, and the ugly. All in one. That's who helping you, Malik. That's who." "Notorious thugs?" Malik said with his head down. He made two practice swings with his hatchet. "The notorious thugs." "You bet," Nolan said. "You bet whatever bottom dollar y'got." Malik stumped himself on that. "I got no money. You see, I gave it to the little ones." "And who are they again?" "I thought you knew," Malik said, then recovered what he was working to. "Little Hailey and very little Caleb. My young ones. I gave them my money, so they'd have some always. Bus fare, you know." "I sucked at math," Nolan told him. "But okay." The tunnel was a long cylinder. No dead walked about here, and no screams to hear. It was cold, it is cold. The notorious thugs are for the chilly weather, only not for what's in store. Lyle, in fact, doesn't know where they're headed for. Maybe Blockbusters, catch a movie flick or two. Maybe Heaven, and perhaps Malik does know that much. The Grim reaper came closer. "I want to find them," Malik said. "I really want to." "We will," Lyle reassured him, stopping in his fast tracks. He let the man catch up and put an arm around him, held Malik close. "We will, brother." "You believe in miracles?" "Sometimes." A while later, the five reached a break in the woods of darkness. There was a door, the gates into Hell. On the new wall, trunk-sized pipes lined across it. There's a fading light in the distance, how distant is too hard to say. Lyle's heart started to pound, his eyes whitened purely in the dark. The fear is what sucked, and hell is what came with it. "Doggone it," he muttered, hauling Malik behind the wall. "What's it about?" Dennis Johnson said. He's got his hoodie on, looking mighty intimidating. Underneath it, he's scared like a chicken. One below a blade, a long gleaming scythe that noiselessly appears before it. "Well?" "Our predators. We're the prey." Lyle Jackson looked around. "Our situation is a tight one, clear as day. What do you think we gotta do: fight or run?" "I think," Malik said with that scythe rounding atop his head. "We run." "Good choice, good man. Great head on your shoulders." Before they crossed the river of Styx, Lyle gave Derek a plain stare. There wasn't a lot behind it, just a stare. "God forbid, this man crosses me." "I won't," Derek Woods told him. "I won't, you paranoid sonofabitch." "Well, if I do die afore we get outta here," Lyle showed the light at the door. "I want you nowhere near my grave, heard?" "Nowhere near it, right." Issues Category:Step by Step Category:Category:Step by Step Issues Category:Issues